Embers (Original SciFi)

[Noble Ire]

I've recently become somewhat discouraged with the direction the main plotline of Sindelin, a SciFi setting of my own invention, and I'm attempting to work past the impass by exploring other facets of the universe. This is the beginnings of one such effort, and it (hopefully) does not require any prior knowledge of the setting. It is also my attempt at a submission for National Novel Writing Month, for which contestants are supposed to write a 50,000 word novella over the month of November. Yeah, I didn't quite make it to the required length...
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Sindelin: Embers


My involvement with the Clift’mal was, in large part, a symptom of the Kivnya Agreement of 416. That is not to say that I did not hold some curiosity about the enigmatic species and their ancient civilization before that date; I would have been remiss in my duties as a student of anthropology to ignore an entity as wide-spread and tantalizingly unknown as they. However, a strict doctrine of isolationism that stretched back more than a century made any real study of the species and its culture an exercise in guesswork and extrapolation, neither of which have ever been favored resources of mine. With only scattered rumors from remote Fringe colonies and a few old, glaringly vague historical accounts of encounters with the insectoid species to draw upon, I had long relegated any more in-depth study of them to the file of subjects with which I hope to occupy my mind when my limbs submit to the rigors of extended age and empirical research (assuming the later doesn’t end my studies prematurely).

The war changed everything. It had taken the near-immolation of the entire Galaxy to draw the Clift’mal and their sprawling empire from their sheath of silence, but draw them it did. Those better versed in matters of military strategy than I would be better disposed to detail the Empire’s role in that great conflict, but everyone knows that were it not for the Clift’mal’s great martial prowess and boundless, almost suicidal drive, the invading hordes from beyond the far-flung arms of our galactic realm would have overwhelmed every sovereign state and defiant world, as they very nearly did nonetheless. The price for this awakening was high, worse perhaps than any other front of the war, and when the fires of conflict at last abated, the mighty people could no longer afford to sink back into their self-imposed exile.

Seeking both the security and economic stability that would be vital for reconstruction, the Empire became a chief partner in a wide range of political, military, and aid compacts, most of them pioneered by the Union of Incorporated Systems First Director Kevaryom. Though it was principally concerned with matters of immediate and pragmatic import, projects like the Fringe Protection Initiative and so forth, the state also relaxed its domestic constraints, allowing the tendrils of cultural exchange to take root alongside new trade lanes and martial protocols. The flow of data was slow at first, but within only two years, universities and think tanks around the rest of the galactic disk had access to an unparalleled amount of information on nearly every facet of Clift’mal society and history (most of it was carefully reviewed and edited by the Imperial authority before being released, but it was all still far better than nothing).

Despite this influx, I was slow to immerse myself in the new reams of Clift’mal lore. Even in the post war period, when my career was still fairly young, I had enough research work and published material to my name to be approached by the Union Ministry of Culture, as were most other sociologists, journalists, and authors of the time. We were all tasked with detailing, on a personal level, the loss and recovery of a Galaxy torn apart. Selected for my linguistic skills and experience in the world on the edge of civilization, I traveled to half a dozen worlds, each far removed from the mainstream of galactic society. Once there, I uncovered and recorded the impact the war had had on the largely disenfranchised and forgotten citizens of the cosmos; needless to say, it hurt them a great deal more than even the most pessimistic government analysts were willing to let on.

After a few years, half a dozen planets, and a flood of documentation, I at last returned to my alma mater, Monolith Peak University on Vkker, ready to reassume my pre-war role as a proctor of anthropology. I was eager to return to the more mundane and controlled existence the posting provided; though my experiences abroad had been greatly enriching, constant travel, often through dangerous and untamed locales, had taken its toll, and my days of limitless youthful vigor had long since passed by. Besides, the data I had accrued over my far-flung expeditions would require extensive analysis and study, both for the Union and more personal academic pursuits. Indeed, there was enough material there to keep me occupied and interested for nearly half a decade of focused research.

As it happened, one of the first files I pulled up, a scant few days after returning to my old, cluttered office in the Sapient Studies wing of the university, came from Granary, one of the most distant of the planets I had visited on my tour. It was an unremarkable world, I remembered, possessing only a tenuous atmosphere and an equally spartan biosphere, facts that had impelled its population of ten thousand-odd colonists to seek habitation beneath the craggy surface. It had been settled a few decades before the formation of the Union when a navigational failure had landed a large agricultural ship in a failing orbit around the barren globe, and its intrepid crew had managed to scuttle the vessel, largely intact, deep within a sheltered ravine. Despite the utter lack of resources that their planet had to offer, the crew elected to stay, and eventually carved a few underground townships out of the surrounding rock. There they had remained, largely ignored by the rest of the galaxy for the next two centuries, serving time to time as a jumping-off point for deep range exploratory missions and generally preserving a respectable quality of life for themselves.

Then the war came, and the Union realized that Granary would be the perfect spot for a brand new military observation post; it was remote, near lines of recent enemy movement, and its unruly surface could easily disguise a massive strategic observatory. After a brief series of negotiations, Granary’s ruling council accepted admission into the Union of Incorporated Systems, and received in return a small federal stipend, a nominal garrison, and a state-of-the-art listening station just a few dozen kilometers from the planet’s modest capital. Within less than a year, the system was buzzing with the observatory’s network of spy drones, and Granary’s populace had adapted to maintaining the base and its crew.

Some of the planet’s citizens had also found occupation in the facility itself. Ollam Byr, a middle-aged, well spoken Daent male, was one such individual.

I had interviewed Ollam on his experiences during the war, along with a dozen other inhabitants of various backgrounds and experiences, over a period of about two weeks, and spent what time I had left exploring the planet’s culture and infrastructure, with a particular focus on the impact induction into the Union had had on the secluded people. It was the shortest leg of my tour, but Granary’s population is minute compared to the other locales I would visit, and they had been relatively been untouched by any actual combat, save for a small skirmish near the edge of the system in the final year of the invasion. Nevertheless, the Ministry had wanted a wide range of viewpoints for their project, and I was more than willing to give the planet’s people a voice. At the very least, the period gave me a much-needed respite between two rather more inhospitable assignments in wilder regions of the cosmos.

Ollam had served as a telemetry analyst at the observatory until it was shut down in 415, and had listened in on most communications packets that were transmitted in his region of the galaxy for the better part of the war. He had apparently enjoyed his job immensely, and had related in detail the complicated process by which the facility received, complied, and scrutinized endless streams of data that a small armada of drones continually collected from hundreds of potentially sensitive star systems. Much of what he had heard and seen was still classified, but Ollam was at liberty to recount some of it, and he did so with enthusiasm.

I must admit that much of what the sapient said in that portion of his interview was well beyond my sphere of experience and understanding, and as I listened to the recording for the first time my thoughts began to wander. However, as I absently scribbled down a reminder to check a few background facts on a brief summation of my recent travels I was preparing, Ollam’s crisp voice brought me back to the audio file. Amidst an intricate description of the way in which certain stellar phenomena project false comm signals, the analyst had mentioned the Clift’mal.

Upon returning to Monolith Peak, I had found a great many of my colleagues entranced by the reinvigorated study of the Empire. Evidently, a dignitary of some note was staying in Vkker’s capital, Knivys, and she had been granting what were purportedly enthralling audiences with the planet’s top politicians and academics. I had been too absorbed with the prospect of compiling my research and settling back into a stationary existence to pay much attention to the trend or its catalyst, but it had registered in the back of my mind nonetheless. The Clift’mal and their civilization were an old interest, after all.

Intrigued, I played back the last section of the recording.

“…that said, the emissions of pulsars, neutron stars, and the like weren’t the only signals that we had to filter out to isolate any useful transmissions. There was a lot of data that we picked up on our own fleet movements as well, of course, and you wouldn’t believe how many drones came back with payloads of nothing but chatter from obscure mining facilities or remote science satellites. We probably spent at least a quarter of every shift just dumping junk data until command worked out more precise search patterns.”

“Still, some of the extraneous stats we picked up were fairly interesting. I recall that on at least a few occasions the probes came back with residuals from Imperial transmissions. Mind you, this was before they joined the fight, so none of use was really expecting to hear anything on the communications bandwidths that the Clift’mal use. Most of it was gibberish, probably encoded remnants of old combat exercises or something, but the odd thing was that none of the drones that picked up the stuff were anywhere near their space. We would know; some higher ups had apparently made it very clear to Captain Nejili that our probes were to give the Clift’mal a wide berth, and he made sure we understood that just as well as he did. The last thing anybody wanted was to violate their borders and add another front to the war.”

“Now that I think about it, one of the info packets we processed did have a bit of intelligible Imperial text mixed in with the static, from one of the drones assigned to the Sector 4-8201. Of course, none of us could read the fragment, but one of the allied technicians on staff was a bit of a history buff, and he dug out an old translation of a pre-Drift Conflict Clift’mal trade document for us to use. We never did get very far with the text strand, the tech transferred out with his translation soon after, but I do remember that it was something about a hunt. Or was it some sort of violation? Eh, weren’t ever that sure about what it said.”

At that point in the file, Ollam moved into a lengthy accounting of his various fellows at the observatory, and never mentioned the unusual signal again. However, the brief anecdote had been all that was required to firmly grasp my interest.

Over the next few days, I continued my work as normal, but between review of the products of my long tour and various requirements of the university, I found time to tap into the growing pool of information on the Clift’mal Empire. The picture they painted of themselves was an interesting one; befitting their biological nature, the Clift’mal civilization was matriarchal and based on several vast “hives”, or clans, with a single queen at the head of each. These hives, each of which controlled hundreds inhabited worlds, formed a tight-knit federation of states under a central empress. This empress, selected by a council of Clift’mal hive queens, held absolute power over her dominion, which encompassed nearly half the galactic disk, even if she traditionally allowed each hive to handle its own internal affairs. The texts that the Imperial authority had provided stated that this system of governance had persisted since before the Clift’mal had expanded from their homeworld, Tynimal, seven millennia before the rest of the galaxy set down their first roots amongst the stars.

Now, the dynamics of national expansion isn’t quite my field of study, but I knew enough of the mindset of militaristic peoples, as the Clift’mal unabashedly were and are to this day, to find this last fact somewhat incongruous. Surely, such an ancient space-faring civilization, far older than any Union historian had ever estimated, would have been able to expand farther than it did in the time given. They possessed the cultural will, and considering their showing during the war, the ability as well; the Empire should have spread to the worlds occupied by the Union and its neighbors while each nation was still in its infancy. Either the Clift’mal were exaggerating the venerability of their state, or there were other factors at play within their domain that the Empress and her subordinates were not keen on revealing to their new allies. As I continued to sift through data files and print dossiers, I resolved to investigate the quandary further in the future.

For the time being, however, I moved on to the detailed diagrams and maps of Imperial territory that the recent exchanges had deposited in the university’s vaults. Ollam Byr’s account of the errant transmissions from Sector 4-8201 stuck in the back of my mind with a tenacity I was at a loss to explain, and I was eager to see if the new data at my disposal could shed some light on the incidents.

As it turned out, the sector in question was even further removed from the center of the galaxy than Granary had been. Located on the inner edge of Galactic Arm VI, the cross-section of several thousand stars was unremarkable and almost completely devoid of any recorded activity, well beyond even the most far-flung of the Union’s old trade spines. The Clift’mal seemed to have found the area equally unappealing; though there were numerous populated systems within several-days travel of the sector, the region and its surroundings registered as a simple collection of lifeless star and rocky planetoids on every one of their charts. As Ollam had indicated, 4-8201 was not officially claimed by the Empire, and by all accounts, they didn’t have any incentive for doing so. However, I did note a large globule of space immediately beyond the sector in question which was just as barren as its neighbor, but was encompassed by their arbitrary demarcation line nonetheless.

None of this, on its face, was particularly out of the ordinary. The galaxy is mostly empty space, dying stars, and lifeless gas giants, and any political entity of notable size inevitably accumulates vast swaths of the stuff between pinpricks of life and civilization. That far-flung gulf may have been just another obligatory patch of nothingness. Still, I was struck by just how empty 4-8201 seemed to be. There was simply no need for any Clift’mal vessel to find itself there, especially not in sufficient quantity for remote probes searching for massed communication pulses to detect repeatedly.

It was all quite odd, but I had found nothing verifiable enough to worth noting to anyone else. What was more, with the star charts and astrogation logs at our disposal reviewed, my sources on the borders and military activity of the Clift’mal Empire abruptly dried up. That was unsurprising; I hadn’t really expected them to send a foreign university a detailed treatise on their naval doctrine and defensive maneuvers during the war, even if the lack of such a document did leave me irrationally disappointed.

And on top of that, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for in the first place. All I had was a hunch that there was something unusual about a far-flung border sector that no one, including myself up to a few days previously, had ever heard of or seriously considered.

Perhaps I was simply unwilling to settle back into the humdrum of working life, and was making excuses to divert my attentions. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Whatever the root of my interest, though, I resolved to explore the last two untapped resources easily available to me before putting the matter out of my mind. First, I put in a request at the University’s Acquisitions Office; Monolith Peak’s prestigious reputation has a multitude of advantages, not the least of them is access to the vaults and libraries on a hundred Union worlds and beyond. I knew of several old files and manuscripts, mostly from the theistic Republic of New Neerich, which had been an ally and trading partner of the Clift’mal during a brief lapse in their isolationism more than a century before that had fallen into Union hands in the intervening period. Allegedly, amidst commerce ledgers and manifests, there a few documents that shed some more light on Imperial history and society. Fortunately, the Daen Museum of Galactic History on Dantillee had a collection of the materials that they were willing to put on loan.

Transportation of the artifacts would take time, the Acquisitions Office informed me, at least three days. In the mean time, there was one resource left at my disposal. I decided to pay a visit to Vkker’s capital, and the unusual guest who had taken roost there.

[Ford Prefect]

Very good! If I could hazard a guess, I'd say that the narrator is Tamin, though that's just a feeling.

[Noble Ire]

Very good! If I could hazard a guess, I'd say that the narrator is Tamin, though that's just a feeling.

Quite right. I'm going to introduce the name of the narrator later, as it comes up in the story, but I'm glad someone who is at least familiar with the character could pick up on him.

[Ford Prefect]

I'd always wondered how he'd actually worked, and this story answers that well. Excellent.